In Aarklash: Legacy take command of a mercenary squad in search of truth and guide it through countless battles. Welcome to Aarklash, a land of chaos where incessant battles between the forces of Light, Destiny and Darkness have lasted since the beginning of time.

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Reviews

“Cyanide’s Aarklash: Legacy is a must for every fan of tactical party-based RPG”
8.5/10 – Softpedia

“I dare say Aarklash: Legacy is one of my favorite gameplay experiences of the year. For the price Cyanide Studio is asking, you’d be missing out on quite a game to pass this by.”
9/10 – Capsule Computers

“Aarklash's combat is some of the best I've seen in the genre”
8/10 – RTS Guru

About This Game

In Aarklash: Legacy take command of a mercenary squad in search of truth and guide it through countless battles.

Welcome to Aarklash, a land of chaos where incessant battles between the forces of Light, Destiny and Darkness have lasted since the beginning of time. At the heart of this conflict, a group of mercenaries, wrongly accused of crimes against the Lion of Alahan, is being hunted down. Convinced that they are in the right, and intent on fighting their enemies to the bitter end, they will set forth on an epic adventure where they will discover dark secrets. A path strewn with obstacles and many unfriendly characters awaits them. Go into battle and fight for your life! Your actions will determine the destiny of Aarklash…

Inspired by the Confrontation figurines universe, Aarklash: Legacy is a tactical adventure game. The player will find himself at the heart of the intrigue, controlling a group of 4 characters and leading them into battle across the lands of Alahan, Acheron, and the Behemoth. Final victory for the mercenaries is gained by the use of a wide range of powers which are enhanced through looting items and managed via skills trees which can be reset at will. Interaction between the heroes is also important and real bonds will be created between them as the game progress. Both fun and action await you in Aarklash: Legacy!

Key features:

Take part in an epic campaign, mixing adventure and tactical combat, following a rich storyline that will transport you into the fantasy world of Aarklash.

Thanks to the active pause system, choose the best tactics to succeed in battle.

At any time in the game, dissolve your team and then recombine it by choosing 4 characters from the available 8.

Through numerous and intense battles, make your heroes work together using group skills.

A skill tree will allow you to change the skills of each of your characters. Find the best combinations to take full advantage of the possibilities of your group as a whole.

Take on enemies and various organized groups, who also have their own skills!

Loot objects from your enemies and progress your group throughout the game.

Graphics: Integrated or mobile graphic card, with at least 256MB of dedicated VRAM and with at least DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 4.0 support. ATI/AMD Radeon 3800 series and above and NVIDIA GeForce 8600 series are minimum required graphic cards

Aarklash is for people who like real time with pause tactical RPGs that are extremely challenging. If that is your thing, you will love it. I am not one of those people, but I know a well-crafted game when I see it.

This is the only RTwP game I've ever played that had non-moronic, click-and-watch/wait combat. This game is linear and not a true RPG, but has rpg elements such as character building and a real inventory and loot/item upgrading. No chargen. This is more of a linear story driven squad TBS or Tactics game (like FF tactics) except with RTwP combat.

The strong point of this game is the combat. Even though it is RT you NEED to micromanage, and the game makes it easy and not frustrating like it is with the IE games, NWN 2, or Drakensang where micromanaging is an exercise in frustration and futility. A lot of bosses require a solid strategy to win. The combat is done surprisingly well and I don't know why this game wasn't more of a hit.

-Puzzles to unlock goodies on about every level-Awesome puzzles to complete storyline-Good storyline-Combat is intriguing and makes you think--must be very strategic.-The number of companions that you can control and deck out with gear-Pausing the game to plan out strategies-Talent trees to cutomize for each companion; it adds a deeper level of gameplay-Decent graphics

Cons:

-Game has some bugs--sometimes the abilities for a companion will not show up. Or, when you click on a companion, another companion's abilities show up. When this happens, you have to restart the game to fix. ...So, because of this, you need to remember to save the game after every battle!! -Gear is simplistic--it doesn't seem to have gear specific to any one character, it doesnt change the look of your character, and it does not change or add abilities to any character. Basically. gear just adds passive stats.-No end game. When you beat it, that's it. No unlocking of ubber mode, or anything, to find better gear for your characters. So, you can't really do anything else with the characters you have leveled up and decked out...not even restart and play the game again with your decked out characters.

Pro or Con?

-Easy to cheat to get gear. Just stand in front of a treasure box before you open it and save. If you don't like what you get, just load that save point and try again. You can do this when creating loot, too. -Right before you beat the game, the storyline takes a drastic turn and ends, leaving you hanging.

What I would like to see in DLC or part 2 if they choose to make it, which devs should:

-Instead of still pausing, make it to where everything is in slowmo when you hit what is now the pause key. -better gear-some end game-more challenges and hidden treasure-more bosses

Tips if you decide to buy:

-Save Frequently-Wendaroo is freaking awesome, so learn how to use her.-Save before opening chests so you can reload last save if you don't like what you get.-When creating loot, the last item is the item you will create.. it could've been my imagination, though, but it usually also had the last attribute of that item put into it too.-Go for one target at first--usually the squishy magic type, like priests or mages. If you can't demolish it in 5 seconds, split your damage amongst other targets...usually I tried demolishing one fast. But when that didn't work, I usually split dmg across two targets in two seperate areas until one or the other was very low hp and then switched to full focus dmg on that one. This also helped me metigate inc damage better because I could see everything that was going on better so I knew who to heal and dispel and such.

Aarklash Legacy is a highly tactical RPG set in the world of Aarklash and based on the desktop miniature game Confrontation. While not a direct sequel by any means, it is set in the same world as the handily named Confrontation, a far inferior game, also from Cyanide Studios.

You play as a group of Wheelswords, the debt collectors of the Gold Mongers guild, the group that funds the armies of the ever warring races in Aarklash. Your initial 4 person group is quite the motley lot, a part mechanical lizard with self confidence issues, a dog-monster, a tiny rat-like man and the standard fantasy trope of a sorceress in skin tight revealing clothing. While the player doesn't have a customisable avatar of their own, it becomes clearer as the story goes that one of the starting four serves as the POV character. Over the course of the game you'll meet 4 more characters that can be swapped in at any time for a maximum of 4 in the party. All the characters are interesting and frequently talk among themselves and the game itself is fully voice acted very well.

Where the game really shines is the isometric real-time with pause combat. The standard MMO trinity applies here, with a tank to hold and collect as many mobs up as possible and hopefully orient them away from the squishier party members and 3 support or damage dealers. Each character is limited to only four abilities and an auto-attack. While this might seem limiting at first all the abilities can be significantly changed as you level up and with the ability to respec at will you can tailor your group to each individual fight. Positioning is vitally important here, many of your parties abilities are line of sight. There is nothing more annoying than firing off a healing disk and having an enemy walk in between and get healed instead!

All enemies and bosses have there own set of abilities that can be viewed at any time and you should ignore these at your peril. Enemies come in many types, tanks who self-heal and can resurrect themselves, healers, debuffers, melee, ranges, summoners and many more. While bosses come with own set of difficulties, many have insta-kill abilities like stay too close and you die, stay too far away and you die or don't stand here and you die. You'll die a lot but all these abilities are telegraphed well! Buffing and debuffing also plays a vital role in the game. A favourite trick of enemy casters is to immediately turn off your group members most vital abilities but luckily some of your other characters are able to strip debuffs off one member and apply them to themselves. Enemies will also constantly control your characters and many fights do degenerate into battling a series of buffs and debuffs with the first few seconds of any fight being the most important. Though one criticism might be once you break the back of an enemy group, it can become a bit of a grind to finish a group off with no real threat.

As opposed to the combat this is not a gear heavy game though, each character only has 4 slots, relic, ring, necklace and earring and you can't change armor or weapons or make any visual change to the characters. There are also no merchants in the game, just a recycling mechanic where once you put in enough items in you'll get a high quality item back.

The game also contains a heavy puzzle element outside of the combat. From the standard lights out puzzles, though on a grand scale, to match the floaty magic symbol with various parts made up from lever pulls to guide the light through a maze. At times the number of puzzles in a row can overwhelm, you can bypass some of them, but you might miss out on some of the best loot!

This game is very demanding of the player, asking of exact positioning, use of all your various abilities and strategies and punishing of mistakes. The difficulty is also set very high, it's not easy, medium, hard, it's more on the Super Hexagon Scale, hard, harder and harderest! Though I think the latest patch may have toned the difficulty down a little bit. But, don't let that scare you off as you'll miss one of the best tactical RPGs in years!

Story is intriguing in the beginning, dulls after a while. Puzzles are kind of annoying in this game. Loot does not reflect on your characters looks, and loot is basically just stat upgrades.

HOWEVER, Gameplay is SOLID. Very fun. Very tactical. Has a tactical pause system and making a wrong decision in battle wether that be your positioning or focusing the wrong guy first or missing an ability timing... can kill you. The cons mentioned up above are annoying yeah, but overall in a game like this , the gameplay is the most important part to me. I bought it at full price and was pleased with my experience. If you're not sure, wait for a sale and then DEFINITELY pick it up.

Each character has 4 main abilities. As you level up characters in the game, you can allocate stat points into these abilities. Each ability has a tree that branches out into different paths. You can basically max two of any of the eight branches on each character, thus customizing their playstyle. You can have a mage healer, or they can be a damage dealer or a mix. You can implant a seed that will explode if you kill the enemy within x number of seconds, and the explosion can do a heal AOE to teammates caught within range of said explosion, or you can max a completely different ability.

There end up being eight playable characters, and you make a party of four. You choose the four. Seriously, the gameplay styles are really left in your hands with how you want to play the game. Very wise on the devs part. These are the reasons the gameplay is so satisfying. When all the abilities in your party go off just right and you completely wreck a mob... it feels pretty good.